The Battle With Bias: Reducing Unconscious Bias in Your HR Decisions
When it comes to bias, chances are that as an organization, you have the best of intentions. Lattice’s newly released 2023 State of People Strategy Report demonstrates that most HR teams do. Based on survey responses from 820 HR and People team professionals across industries and company sizes, our report found that a full 61% of HR leaders have increased their efforts to reduce bias in performance reviews.
That’s good news. It demonstrates equity is a priority and that Human Resources teams understand putting equity in place means removing bias from the tools and processes they use, which can influence hiring, compensation, and career-growth decisions. These efforts to root out bias can permeate throughout an organization, positively impacting performance, employee retention, and talent acquisition.
But over half of People teams surveyed for our recent State of People Strategy Report said they still have considerable room for improvement when it comes to removing bias. So what can HR teams do to work toward more equity?
The Problem of Bias
When unconscious bias goes unchecked, it can cause inequity in the workplace. Take the pay gap, for example. In 2020, the US Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) found that women earned just 82 cents for every dollar earned by a white man. Women of color don’t even fare as well as that. An analysis of 2021 US Census Bureau data by the National Partnership for Women & Families shows that even Black women with full-time, year-round employment make 67 cents for every dollar made by a white, non-Hispanic man (a number that doesn’t account for those taking leave for family care, a task that more often than not falls on women).
While there are many factors responsible for the pay gap, unconscious bias in the workplace plays a major role. In fact, when it’s not kept under control, bias can seep into all your HR decision-making. And when managers are left to make quick judgments and assessments based on an individual’s background, race, gender, age, appearance, accent, and the like, some employees can find themselves losing out on promotions, raises, or new opportunities, through no fault of their own.
Research published in the Journal of Applied Psychology found that as much as 62% of variance in performance review ratings is a result of whoever happened to be the reviewer. Up to 25% could be linked to an actual variation in performance.
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Source: Lattice, January 24, 2023 — By Lisa Van de Ven
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